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Obama-Osama mix-up had to happen eventually

It's time to start a pool: Which celebrity, politician or news organization will be the next to mix up Barack Obama and Osama bin Laden?

On Monday, if you were watching the East Coast feed of MSNBC's HardballWith Chris Matthews, you probably noticed something bizarre. While discussing the American primaries, Matthews asked, "What did Barack Obama say and why is it causing controversy?"

Here's a better question, Chris, and one that's equally controversial: in this discussion about Obama, why did your graphics department flash a picture of Osama? And not just any picture, the one where he's smirking and holding up a finger, as if to say: "Hey, media infidels! I am the world's most wanted terrorist! I am not that eloquent American politician with presidential aspirations! I know our names are separated by just one consonant but enough already! These gaffes are confusing my fellow jihadists!"

On Tuesday, NBC News reprimanded the unidentified employee responsible for the headshot switcheroo. For the record, Matthews apologized on air moments after the incident. But as an MSNBC spokesperson told The Associated Press: "This mistake was inexcusable."

Inexcusable, perhaps, but hardly the first instance of what might be termed the Osama-Obama-Blunderama. Last year, a contrite Wolf Blitzer apologized after a report on CNN's The Situation Room – about the search for bin Laden – included an opening graphic that read, "Where's Obama?"

(My guess: somewhere kicking a television set.)

The following day, Blitzer blamed the incident on a "typographical error." As he said during a chat with colleague Soledad O'Brien, "I will be making a call to (Obama) later this morning to offer my personal apology."

Let's just hope he didn't ask the CNN switchboard to get him the dialling code for Tora Bora.

Meanwhile, about a month later, as the gals of The View gabbed about the menace of paparazzi, panelist Joy Behar suddenly said: "She needs to go wherever Obama bin Laden is hiding –"

A puzzled Barbara Walters interjected: " – Obama bin Laden?"

The slip of the tongue led to this tongue-in-cheek quip from Rosie O'Donnell: "We would like to apologize to all the Obamas in America ..."

Other victims of the Osama-Obama-Blunderama include broadcasters Alina Cho and Glenn Beck, Republican politician Mitt Romney, the New York Post and, one suspects, countless everyday folk.

So can we simply attribute this confusion to a spoonerism or phonological malapropism? After all, "Obama" and "Osama" share the same opening and closing vowel, syllable count and stress pattern. The only distinguishing feature between those names is, well, "B" "S."

Both have also been in heavy news rotation this decade. Sometimes an accidental linguistic transposition is just an accidental linguistic transposition and not a Freudian slip that hints at racial, cultural or political biases, right?

Right?

Then again, why doesn't anybody ever blurt out "Hilary of Chichester" when actually referring to Hillary Clinton? And why have we yet to see a report on John McCain in which his smiling mug was accidentally replaced with a bag of frozen french fries?

Who knows, now that Obama is flexing his political muscles and (possibly) storming into the history books, maybe he finds this stuff amusing. When your middle name is widely associated with a dictator (Hussein) and your first and last initials spell B.O., inadvertent confusion with a terrorist mastermind is probably the least of it.

Me, I'm hoping Obama goes all the way to the White House. Because then we may hear a newscaster utter the crown jewel in the Osama-Obama-Blunderama: "American president Barack Osama confirms U.S. forces have just captured Obama bin Laden!"

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